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Human Growth Hormone

By johklis on 09/03/2011

Human Growth Hormone History
Scientists have known the existence of Human Growth Hormone as early as the 1920s. It was not until 1958 before they began to apply HGH on children that suffer from dwarfism to help them grow normally. The effects were very obvious. The theory behind the use of HGH in those days was that the pituitary gland, which secrets HGH, was either defective or not functioning at all in those children with dwarfism. The main source of Human Growth Hormone for treatment at that time was extracted from the pituitary glands of dead people in Africa. It often took thousands of brains of the dead to produce just a few drops of HGH! Scientists were, therefore, forced to research alternatives such as synthetic HGH. In 1985, Genentech succeeded in producing large quantities of HGH through microbiological replication by inserting human DNA into microorganisms. HGH has 191 amino acids. Genentech was able to produce Human Growth Hormone with 191 amino acids by using bio-engineering of the genes.